TGIF RedStaters!  And welcome to today’s Water Cooler – where anything you have to say and can say in polite company is welcome – because the Water Cooler is always an Open Thread.  What’s on your mind?  Here’s a few things that popped out for me this week…

Windows 10 .. 9 .. 8 …

I finally allowed one of my computers to be updated to Windows 10, and it is a much better experience than I was having on Windows 7.  The laptop had slowed to a crawl, had a couple of glaring instabilities, and I finally was driven to update.  So my next question was whether I could get my other Windows machines upgraded as well.  Glad I looked it up – I found that (once again) we are nearing the end of the free upgrade.  Here on ZDNet is what I found:

The accessibility upgrade offer expires on December 31, 2017.

So here’s your chance.  And just because some of you will want to re-litigate the whole MacOS vs Windows thing (not that there is anything wrong with that – especially in an open thread), you may want to see Neil Stevens’ warning to MAC users:

Update IMMEDIATELY

There is apparently no safe harbor…

Great Book of the Week – Liberty’s Secrets

Started what is so far a fantastic read – Liberty’s Secrets – The Lost Wisdom of America’s Founders, by Joshua Charles.  A sample:

So what was the secret of the Founders’ insights?  In more modern terms, how did they “get it” so well?  The answer is very simple: they understood human nature and history.  That is it.  They believed man was imperfect but nevertheless capable of great things.  They believed he was driven by selfish motives far too often but was also capable of rising above his selfishness for the betterment of his fellows.

That’s it for this week RedStaters.  What’s on your mind?